As the end of March approaches, so too does the end of the fiscal year for Nintendo. Around now, we would normally be expecting a Nintendo Direct, but there hasn’t been much in the way of an announcement for it.
If you’re unfamiliar, Nintendo Directs are Nintendo’s version of minor announcements, where they lay out what they intend to do for the rest of the year for fans. They’ll generally announce upcoming games, new developments, and any other big news they have in these Directs.
Their silence could be caused by the COVID-19 pandemic that’s ravaging the world, driving a great amount of production to a standstill. With so many developers working from home, perhaps Nintendo isn’t able to pull a full direct together to offer the public?
Whatever the reason, their silence remains. Unfortunately, that silence has given way for other people to raise their voices in their stead, with a bunch of trolls being quick to fill the space.
People have been creating fake accounts that look similar to Nintendo’s appearance in order to spread completely false and incorrect “announcements.” There doesn’t seem to be anything to gain out of this other than the simple pleasure of deceiving people, apparently, but that isn’t stopping anyone.
We’ve placed one of them above – and again, we cannot stress enough that that tweet is a fake Nintendo Direct announcement. Looking at it, it would be incredibly easy to mistake it for the real thing. It has the Nintendo logo for a picture and a Nintendo based name, as well as what some might see as an official-looking enough Twitter handle. They even added a cloud emoji to look similar to a blue checkmark if you look fast enough, only seeing the announcement as you scroll down.
The information they provide even looks believable. Many people have speculated that Nintendo will be talking more about the upcoming Breath of the Wild sequel in their next Nintendo Direct, so mentioning that specifically just lends credence to the idea.
But, unfortunately, the tweet is one of the hundreds of completely fake announcements. Some Twitter users even joked that if Nintendo does announce a direct at this rate, no one is going to believe them because of how tired we all are of seeing the fake ones.
So if you see a Nintendo Direct announcement, keep a close eye on the account. It’s helpful to go to the account posting the tweet and see how many followers they have to see if they’re real or not. The one we mentioned, for example, had a few dozen followers, whereas the official Nintendo of America Twitter account has 10.4 million.
